Configure the browser storage#

By default JupyterLite uses the user’s browser storage to store settings and site preferences.

Settings Storage#

By default, all of a user’s settings on the same domain will be available to all JupyterLite instances hosted there. To create separate settings stores, change the jupyter-lite.json#jupyter-config-data/settingsStorageName from the default of JupyterLite Storage - <baseUrl>.

By default, the best available, persistent storage driver will be used. One may force a particular set of drivers to try with jupyter-lite.json#jupyter-config-data/settingsStorageDrivers. See more about local storage drivers.

Local Storage Drivers#

By default, the “best” localForage driver will be selected from the technologies available in the user’s browser.

To force choosing from a particular set of technologies, settingsStorageDrivers, contentsStorageDrivers and workspacesStorageDrivers can be specified, with the first browser-compatible driver being chosen.

configuration value

technology

persistent?

note

asyncStorage

IndexedDB

yes

usually the one selected

webSQLStorage

WebSQL

yes

localStorageWrapper

localStorage

yes

memoryStorageDriver

in-memory

NO

requires enableMemoryStorage

other

unknown

unknown

may be added by third-party extensions

Volatile Memory Storage#

Many extensions and features require the ability to at least think they are saving and loading contents and settings. If a user’s data cannot be stored due to browser security settings, a JupyterLite app will generally fail to fully initialize: while this might be frustrating, losing a user’s unique data creation is even more frustating.

Warning

If persistence is entirely handled outside of JupyterLite, e.g. in an embedded repl it is possible to disable all persistence, assuring total user data loss after every page/iframe reload:

  • set enableMemoryStorage to true

  • set contentsStorageDrivers and settingsStorageDrivers to ["memoryStorageDriver"]